|
Duckbox posted:You forgot the part where he sells a shitload of weapons. That's covered under 1) and 2)
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2017 03:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 20:58 |
|
|
Hot drat, the Houthis MOVED. This kicked off, what, two days ago? That's incredibly goddamn fast. People underestimating Houthi ground power seems to be a consistent theme in this war.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2017 16:30
|
|
|
Ok, taking a step back, will this change the overall strategic situation with Yemen? The blockade is still ongoing an unchallanged, and I don't see that changing just because the Houthis won an internal fight. As dramatic as the last few days were, it seems like the big picture is unchanged.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2017 17:41
|
|
|
mediadave posted:I'm always surprised though the under-reporting of Yemen, compared to Syria. I don't just mean from the mainstream press (but that too) - but with Syria we had armchair generals galore constantly map-making and pontificating. We don't seem to have any of that in Yemen. The stars sort of aligned to make Syria an interesting war to follow. Yemen, on the other hand, is just a depressing, mostly static siege.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2017 18:47
|
|
|
All things considered, I feel like the small possibility of a nuclear breach is fairly balanced by the small chance that the threat will speed up the end of the ongoing genocide by famine.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2017 19:19
|
|
|
Yeah, fighter pilot is one of the acceptably cool lines of work among modern aristocrats. It's the support staff they usually farm out.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2017 02:27
|
|
|
English will do anything to any word at any time. Saudi is a preposition now.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2017 00:57
|
|
|
Volkerball posted:it's certainly not the best tactic to try and extract things from detainees. I think that it's becoming abundantly clear that the Saudis aren't really good at much besides bribery, police state tactics, and Wahabi export.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2017 14:54
|
|
|
CrazyLoon posted:I'll never get over how the SDF are always reported as 'U.S.-backed fighters' while with Yemen it's always just Saudi-led coalition. I mean, it's the Saudi's war. The the fact that they've bought US support doesn't mak charge that.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2017 20:09
|
|
|
Personally, I think that the proliferation of what is effectively cheap, easily manufactured, guided mortars is momentous enough without diving into Clancy territory. gently caress, imagine what the IRA would have gotten up to with drone bombs.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2018 16:03
|
|
|
Speaking of which, what's the state of Libya these days? Any good articles lately summing it up?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2018 16:17
|
|
|
Saudi Arabia is committing genocide. Full stop.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2018 03:34
|
|
|
Oh Jesus Christ, they're starving the Houthi, idiots. Did it somehow not penetrate that the Houthi are a distinct people? Or that the famine is way worse in the Houthi areas? Or that the entire war is explicitly about putting the filthy heretic Houthi under the boot? Everyone else is just collateral.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2018 13:15
|
|
|
Radio Prune posted:Please explain the Houthi Nation and how they are a distinct people. They're a tribal confederation, which is very much a type of government (despite centuries of western sneering). They're largely Zaidi shia, a distinct cultural-religious sect. As far as I understand, they represent the large majority of that population. Radio Prune posted:Nah it was more me wondering how the militant group Ansar Allah are some sort of distinct ethno-religious people. Funny you should bring up Turkey, since the Armenians are kind of the ur-example of a religious minority getting genocided by an ethnically identical sectarian oppressor. Haystack fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jan 17, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2018 21:08
|
|
|
So, as I understand it, the act of killing of Khashoggi isn't really all that new of a move for the Saudis. The usual play would have been to abduct him and fly him back to Saudi to disappear him. That was possibly even the plan, with his death at the consulate being a gently caress up that they tried to cover-up. Regardless, still very within the Saudi's normal MO. What's really new and shocking is that Turkey called the Saudis out on it, and is now keeping everyone riled up about it. From what I can gather, this seems to be a new front in the cold war that Qatar got into with Saudi, with Turkey coming out swinging against the Saudis. I'm happy to see the Saudis taken down a peg, but I'm not thrilled to see Erdogan's Turkey starting to feel its oats and make power plays like this. I'm also worried about the western establishment getting overly enmeshed with Qatari/Turkish interests, in the way that they previously got way too enmeshed with Saudi interests.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2018 03:07
|
|
|
Sinteres posted:We're still supporting Kurdish rebels in Syria, and Erdogan's practically daring us to sanction him over buying Iranian oil, so I wouldn't be too worried just yet. There's plenty of daylight between the US and Turkey. Turkey I'm not too worried about, but Qatar I'm less certain about. I really don't know a ton about Qatar besides their Al-Jazeera cred. I wouldn't have expected the US to lick Saudi boots either, but hey, here were are.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2018 03:49
|
|
|
Yeah, Ames has always been a way better producer than he's ever been a journalist. I forgive him a lot for cultivating John Dolan, though.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2018 17:13
|
|
|
Herstory Begins Now posted:I'm curious sometimes where that sentiment even originated from As far as I can tell, the revolution was really the start of it. The hostage crisis was a serious wound to US pride, and the whole thing pissed off the entire western national security clique. Gulf and Israeli influence on our foreign policy apparatus just added fuel to the fire.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2019 20:24
|
|
|
I do wonder how much of the rise of Islamist military in Syria and Iraq boiled down to those groups being able to field better infantry than the competing insurgents. Infantry seems to be the big deciding factor in wars like this.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2019 00:13
|
|
|
Sinteres posted:Assad objectively did use ISIS to squeeze the moderate rebels, and ISIS more or less went along with it because both sides rationally concluded that significant outside groups couldn't possibly support the other, while the moderates were soft targets with massive potential to grow in strength if they gained outside support (and the other jihadist groups ISIS targeted threatened their legitimacy). Something being rational doesn't make it commendable of course, though cynicism also influenced Israel's policy, as they allowed both Al Qaeda and ISIS to control territory on their border unmolested for years (while freaking out if they see an Iranian anywhere in southern Syria), and of course Turkey's, as they allowed ISIS free use of their territory for recruitment for quite some time to use them against the Kurds. ISIS in particular also got to tap a lot of very relevant combat experience, what with the Iraqui Sunnis and Chechnyans and whatnot. Other factions didn't really have that, apart from, well, the Kurds. That, and ISIS managed to literally weaponize their huge influx of angry young failsons. Those were pretty huge competitive advantages.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2019 17:34
|
|
|
Al-Saqr posted:they won Iraq, Syria and their proxies won Lebanon and are winning in Yemen. Allies, not proxies.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2019 01:18
|
|
|
Who's even keeping the rebels in supply at this point? I'm unclear who their allies are anymore.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2019 18:44
|
|
|
This seems like a pretty natural outgrowth of Israel's feud with Iran and Hezbollah. Feuds don't need a ton of logic besides their own momentum. Besides, being seen to combat yonder national bugbear does wonders for one's career.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2019 16:30
|
|
|
Sinteres posted:The reason it's stupid for Israel to take their war against Iran and their Shia allies away from their own border imo is because if the Gulf States ever do win their regional cold war against Iran, they're probably going to remember pretty quickly which country they hate the second most in the region. It's the same strategic short-sightedness that had Netanyahu cheering for the Iraq War, only to see Iran's power and influence grow as a result. I can't speak for Israel's foresight, but I really doubt that the Gulf states will ever come out on top of their conflict with Iran. The Gulf is relatively untouchable now, but their reliance on soft power has more or less hit its limits, the oil money won't last forever, and they sure as hell don't look like they're doing anything to soften the eventual collapse. Given that, Iran looks way better poised to stay a coherent threat in the long run.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2019 19:26
|
|
|
Am I remembering correctly, or didn't Hezbollah (or at least the Leabonese shia) used to have a lot of internal problems dealing with Palestinian refugees? Is that still an issue, or has that resolved itself to some degree?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2019 02:22
|
|
|
Setting all other things aside, that is some remarkably good accuracy on those strikes. Whoever did that knew what they were doing.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2019 18:52
|
|
|
Might want to include a disclaimer that this is a video of active combat, for those who are troubled by such things.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2019 15:01
|
|
|
Are the Houthi in favor of a north/south partition or are they angling for the entire country?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2019 19:29
|
|
|
The Kurds have never had a good options. The US was the only force offering them anything like actual assistance, so they took it, simple as that. It was always a long shot that the US would be able to actually fend off Turkey, but it was possible that something could have turned out different. I can't blame the Kurds for aiming for the one narrow chance where they might not get mulched. The US, for its part, has done a mediocre, scattershot job of things, especially on the diplomatic front with Turkey.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2019 17:19
|
|
|
Isn't Azerbaijan's military historically pretty terrible, in the Saudi pattern of too much money, not enough morale?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2020 17:44
|
|
|
OhFunny posted:Looks like the Azerbaijanis fell for the feint. MoD just announced a subdivision rushed in after the "retreating" Artsakh forces and were trapped and destroyed. I wonder if we could end up with a yemen-like matchup, where the better equipped aggressor falls apart on the ground offensive against better organized locals.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2020 19:41
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:Wait the Russians are putting boots on the ground after all? What took you so long compared to Ossetia, O' Putin? It's further out of his sphere of interest and he would prefer to keep playing both sides. Compare that to Georgia, which is directly in his sphere of interest and which he actively wanted to make an example of. Classic Great Power stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2020 10:56
|
|
|
Rip Testes posted:How did the Armenians come to be so apparently reviled in the region? Their orthodox Christianity got them mixed up with Russian power plays since, like Ottoman days, and it's all snowballed from there.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2020 15:50
|
|
|
Middle East Thread: Dearth to Armenia
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2020 03:12
|
|
|
Budzilla posted:These items have been in the same location of centuries and now they want them removed? I too love to scold people for taking their precious stuff with them whilst being ethnically cleansed. I get teary eyed thinking about how upset their poor displacers will be, so unjustly deprived of their well-deserved loot.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2020 05:06
|
|
|
Budzilla posted:The place in question was part of the Azerbaijan SSR and is still standing? You can't accuse Azeris of the ethnic cleansing of a place considering that it is still there. It might happen but a lot of things might happen, so before we accuse one side of crimes against humanity just consider other options. What you seem to be missing is that ethnic cleansing has already happened, just by nature of the conflict. An ethnicity has been driven from an area. They were there, a war happened, and now they are not. They were cleansed. You've got to realize, a people fleeing from the threat of state pograms is arguably the main mechanic of ethnic cleansing. Nagorno-Karabakh has already experienced ethnic cleansing in this war, simply because the locals have left and won't be returning for fear of their safety. That's ethnic cleansing. That's what it looks like, in a lot of conflicts. It happened to the N-K Azeris during the 90s, it happened to the Palestinians after ww2, it happened to the Greeks after Ataturk. So it really sticks in my craw when you fingerwag at people for taking their loving religious treasures with them while they loving flee their homes forever, you enourmous clot. Haystack fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Nov 15, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2020 09:01
|
|
|
Sure, I'm game to discuss this. I feel like it boils down to the power dynamics. In your West Bank scenario, who is doing the removing? Is there compensation? What happens to the settlers after their removal? Those details matter. For the N-K Armenians, its a bad situation. The removal was done by dictorial enemy state that's glorified anti-armenian violence, there's little to no chance of restitution, and the victims will be poor refugees in a poor country. It's not the worst situation; it's a fairly small population and they at least have somewhere to flee to. But it's still a tragedy.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2020 09:22
|
|
|
Sinteres posted:So did other people read my post as whitewashing ethnic cleansing too, or just Helsing? I can live without posting for a day, but I don't think that was a fair characterization of what I said. Eh, you were downplaying a situation that's pretty clearly ethnic cleansing. The people who have left have no good reason to believe that they would safe under the new regime, and plenty of reason to believe that they would, at best, be oppressed. Like, this popped up on my feed: https://twitter.com/Zinvor/status/1327303352951197699. It's not a good scene, is what I'm saying. The language of genocide is all of this conflict, one way or the other. This is not a situation where the Azeris could have expected to win without permanently displacing the local population.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2020 18:32
|
|
|
It strikes me that being able to do a remote assassination like this is a big game changer, particularly for the big scary intelligence agencies. It's damned hard to get someone to risk their life being a triggerman. Getting someone's truck, a gun, a rig, and a remote operator is exponentially easier.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2020 23:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 20:58 |
|
|
Disnesquick posted:In terms of security, is this really much of a game changer compared to the old fashioned remote assassination method of loading up some explosives to a timer or radio? Well, explosives cause a ton of collateral damage and/or require pretty close proximity.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2020 00:11
|
|